Timecode ★★★★☆

Imagine four cameras. Imagine four cameras displayed in sync.

I love these kind of formal gimmicks and I probably enjoyed it more than it deserves. The plot is thin, silly, and melodramatic, but it is there to serve the visual storytelling rather than the other way around and it does it well. The film starts and ends in the top right quadrant, focusing on Alex’s wife, who is a character that has so little impact herself that I don’t remember her name at all. But the visual contrast and visual mirroring that that square provides throughout the story still has an important impact on the whole. Similarly for much of the runtime the top left is the devoted Laura suffering quadrant, but I adore being able to look back and see her reactions and her silent, evolving understanding of the whole film in real time.